07 Other Atrocities – Page 394 – Public Intelligence Blog

NSA Whistleblower Speaks Live: “The Government Is Lying To You”

Just a month ago we raised more than a proverbial eyebrow when we noted the creation of the NSA's Utah Data Center (codename Stellar Wind) and William Binney's formidable statement that “we are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state”. Democracy Now has the former National Security Agency technical director whistleblower's first TV interview in which he discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could “create an Orwellian state.” Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national TV about NSA surveillance. Starting with his pre-9-11 identification of the world-wide-web as a voluminous problem since the NSA was ‘falling behind the rate-of-change', his success in creating a system (codenamed Thin-Thread) for ‘grabbing' all the data and the critical ‘lawful' anonymization of that data (according to mandate at the time) which as soon as 9-11 occurred went out of the window as all domestic and foreign communications was now stored (starting with AT&T's forking over their data). This direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country was why Binney decided he could not stay (leaving one month after 9-11) along with the violation of almost every privacy and intelligence act as near-bottomless databases store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.

There was a time when Americans still cared about matters such as personal privacy. Luckily, they now have iGadgets to keep them distracted as they hand over their last pieces of individuality to the Tzar of conformity.

In four parts: read on….

Phi Beta Iota: Neither NSA nor DHS are inherently evil — they are merely expensive, inept, and out of control. They are staffed by good people who mean well, led by good people who mean well, but in the aggregate they are so unAmerican and unConstitutional as to deby belief that they could actually exist and thrive.

See Also:

The Battle for the Soul of the Republic (Reality Sandwich)

2012/04/172012/04/17

Chuck Spinney: Hardware Über Alles in the Spendagon — Paneta Pumps Corporate Profits While Veterans Commit Suicide + Meta-RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, Military, Officers Call

Hardware Über Alles in the Spendagon

(Note to Readers, the following essay is a revised version of one that appeared in Time Magazine's Battleland blog found at this link.)

For a good example of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex’s (MICC’s) value system — which is hardware before ideas and people — read this New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof.

Note his opening paragraph:

Here’s a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.

And here is Kristof’s penultimate paragraph:

We refurbish tanks after time in combat, but don’t much help men and women exorcise the demons of war. Presidents commit troops to distant battlefields, but don’t commit enough dollars to veterans’ services afterward. We enlist soldiers to protect us, but when they come home we don’t protect them.

In between, Kristof supports these statements with horrific detail.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Hardware Über Alles in the Spendagon — Paneta Pumps Corporate Profits While Veterans Commit Suicide + Meta-RECAP”

2012/04/152012/04/15

Theophillis Goodyear: US Veteran Suicides: 25 for each combat death, 18 a day every day year after year + Meta-RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

According to the New York Times, for every U.S. soldier killed on the Battlefield this year, 25 committed suicide.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/15/veteran-death-nation-shame_n_1427263.html

The whole story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html?_r=1

A related topic:

MDMA (known on the street as ecstasy) is showing promise as a psychotherapeutic tool for helping people with post traumatic stress disorder. Here's some info from Vanderbilt University:

http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/2008/PTSD_MDMA.htm

Some more info on MDMA therapy:

http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/

http://www.military.com/news/article/study-ecstasy-treats-ptsd.html

Of course, conservatives tend to resist this kind of psychotherapy, even if it has shown promise, because they had a hard time getting beyond the fact that the drug produces euphoria. But one psychotherapist got special permission from the U.S. government to do a study using MDMA to treat PTSD. I think it's past time they expanded the program to try to start helping soldiers NOW. Before MDMA was made illegal, it was being commonly used as a tool of psychotherapy. So there's plenty of collected information on the subject, going all the way back to the eighties.

Phi Beta Iota: 18 US veterans a DAY succeed in killing themselves. A 1000 a month attempt to do so. This is a problem that in a properly managed government would lead to the firing of everyone from the Secretary of Defense down through the Army Chief of Staff to the head of Army personnel. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a factor, but cognitive dissonance is a greater factor. We also need to remember depleted uranium and bio-chemical left-overs. These people cannot live with what they have done in our name and they live with the toxic environments we fund for them. Because military flag officers have lacked the integrity to dispute illegal unconstitutional orders to wage war on the world, they have put their troops into situations that did not warrant the insertion of our military, and that drawn out over time have destroyed our military and our veterans and therefore our society.

2012/04/152012/04/16

Berto Jongman: Japan Planning Forced Evacuation of 40 Million

02 China, 03 Environmental Degradation, 06 Russia, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Immigration, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Russia Stunned After Japanese Plan To Evacuate 40 Million Revealed

China said to offer up the “ghost cities” immediately capable of ingesting this number.

By: Sorcha Faal

WhatDoesItMean.com, 15 April 2012

A new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Foreign Ministry on the planned re-opening of talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Islands during the next fortnight states that Russian diplomats were “stunned” after being told by their Japanese counterparts that upwards of 40 million of their peoples were in “extreme danger” of life threatening radiation poisoning and could very well likely be faced with forced evacuations away from their countries eastern most located cities…including the world’s largest one, Tokyo.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Japan Planning Forced Evacuation of 40 Million”

2012/04/152012/04/15

Mini-Me: How the US Struck Back to Strangle the Arab Spring

02 Diplomacy, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

Huh?

Revolution vs. Counterrevolution: Whatever Happened to the Arab Spring?

by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH

CounterPunch, Weekend Edition April 13-15, 2012

Within the first few months of 2011, the U.S. and its allies lost three loyal “friends”: Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abbidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Saad Hariri in Lebanon. While Mubarak and Ali were driven out of power by widespread popular uprisings, Hariri was ousted by the parliament.

Inspired by these liberating developments, pro-democracy rebellions against autocratic rulers (and their Western backers) soon spread to other countries such as Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

As these revolutionary developments tended to politically benefit the “axis of resistance” (consisting of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) in the Middle East, the US-Israeli “axis of aggression” and their client states in the region mounted an all-out counterrevolutionary offensive.

Caught off-guard by the initial wave of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, the US and its allies struck back with a vengeance. They employed a number of simultaneous tactics to sabotage the Arab Spring. These included

(1) instigating fake instances of the Arab Spring in countries that were/are headed by insubordinate regimes such as those ruling Iran, Syria and Libya;

(2) co-opting revolutionary movements in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen;

(3) crushing pro-democracy movements against “friendly” regimes ruling countries such as Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia “before they get out of hand,” as they did in Egypt and Tunisia; and

(4) using the age-old divide and rule trick by playing the sectarian trump card of Sunnis vs. Shias, or Iranians vs. Arabs.

Read full article (elaboration on each of the four strategies in being listed above).

Phi Beta Iota: Meanwhile within the USA, Ron Paul has been bought off and firmly put back in place as part of the controlled opposition, and Occupy has been very successfully squelched by encouraging their inherent tendency to kum-ba-ya themselves to their own early demise. Now the 1% has what is left of Occupy competing for small scholarships to tread water and remain irrelevant. It is still possible to re-ignite the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 possibilities, but each month that passes without public coalescing around this ONE THING that the all can agree on and force upon the corrupt two-party tyranny in Congress, is another stake in the heart of the Republic.

2012/04/142012/04/14

Josh Kilbourn: Fukushima #4 Spent Fuel Rods + Earthquake = Nuclear Holocaust

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4: An earthquake before spent fuel rods are moved to safe storage would be “the end”

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Naked Capitalism, Saturday, April 14, 2012

This clip from TV Asahi is a lucid explanation of the biggest ongoing news story in the world today: The catastrophic consequences if an earthquake strikes the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 power plant before its spent fuel rods are moved to safe storage place, a process that will not even begin until December 2013, and could take years. It aired March 8, 2012 on “Morning Bird,” a mainstream Japanese news and information TV program.

NOTE Click the CC button at bottom right (first one from left to right on right side) to show English subtitles!

I made a transcript from the video subtitles (created by tokyobrowntabby), since this interview received no (zero, zip, zilch, nada) coverage in our famously free press, and I’d also like people to be able to quote from it, and search engines to find it. If you just read the transcript, and play the whole video through, at least play the presenters’ reaction shot at [5:04 – 5:07]; “the end” is impactful. The reporter is Mr. Toru TAMAKAWA. The expert is Dr. Hiroaki KOIDE, Research Associate at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University. I’ve marked material from other presenters PRESENTER.

Continue reading “Josh Kilbourn: Fukushima #4 Spent Fuel Rods + Earthquake = Nuclear Holocaust”

2012/04/132012/04/13

Marcus Aurelius: Early Warning DoD Reductions in Force 6% to 50%

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, DHS, DoD, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Office of Management and Budget

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Starting to see initial indications that at least one part of DoD is gearing up to cut anywhere from 6% to 50% of its workforce within the fairly near term, perhaps beginning as soon as 01 Oct. Drivers could be generic deficit reduction, sequestration, and historic limitations on strength levels in certain types of organizations. Expect it to be ugly — sprung at last minute, execute without finesse.)

Government Workers Are Unfairly Assailed

By Ted Kaufman, US Senator (DE)

Wilmington (DE) News Journal
April 8, 2012

We've heard a lot in the past couple of years, pro and con, about escalating CEO compensation, but it seems to me at least one argument in their defense has merit. It is important to pay enough to recruit and retain the best talent available in the highly competitive global marketplace.

What seems strange to me is that those who believe this is true, that you have to pay well to attract the best talent, usually don't accept the same argument when it comes to government employees.

One of the more dangerous consequences of the financial crisis is how governments at all levels are, in effect, cutting off their noses to spite
their faces. In the rush to balance their budgets, some are indiscriminately firing, freezing and cutting pay, and cutting pensions — too often impacting the people who actually make government work.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Early Warning DoD Reductions in Force 6% to 50%”

Category: 07 Other Atrocities

Josh Kilbourn: “we are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state”